{"id":16856,"date":"2017-03-22T18:12:10","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T22:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16856"},"modified":"2017-03-22T18:12:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T22:12:10","slug":"canadians-deserve-a-real-choice-says-leadership-candidate-raitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/canadians-deserve-a-real-choice-says-leadership-candidate-raitt\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadians \u201cdeserve a real choice,\u201d says leadership candidate Raitt"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir
\n<\/strong>
\nFollowing the 2015 Federal Election, which swept the Conservative party into opposition after nearly a decade in Government, re-elected MP Lisa Raitt was one of the first Conservatives out of the gate to speak out about what went wrong.
\nNow, in a crowded field of 14 vying for the party\u2019s top job, she says she brings a unique blend of experiences to the race which will ultimately decide the next Leader of the Opposition, and the next Conservative to battle for Prime Minister.
\nThere were a lot of ridings which got \u201cabandoned\u201d over the course of the last election, Ms. Raitt tells The Auroran, and she is in the race to bring the party back to the \u201cgrassroots\u201d and give ridings the resources they need to fight, regardless if the riding is traditionally Liberal or NDP.
\nAnother takeaway from the 2015 defeat is \u201ccommunicating well with communities.\u201d
\n\u201cI want to be a leader that when [Newmarket-Aurora Conservative candidate of record Lois Brown] goes door-to-door she is proud of her leader and doesn\u2019t have to defend her leader at the door,\u201d says Ms. Raitt. \u201cThat is what happened in our last election, possibly because it was a long time we were in power. With me, it is a little bit different. I know what it is like to live that suburban small-town and middle-town kind of Ontario existence and communicate fairly well.\u201d
\nMs. Raitt is one of 14 candidates in a crowded \u2013 and sometimes headline-grabbing \u2013 field. She generated some of her own the day after sitting down with The Auroran as one of the loudest voices against allegedly fraudulent party membership registrations collected over the course of this lengthy campaign.
\nIn a race with so many contenders, Ms. Raitt says her goal is to call \u201cas many thousands of people in Canada as possible, get them on the phone, and talk to them about what I think is important in a leader and how I envision our party going forward to win in 2019.\u201d
\n\u201cWhen I have these conversations, the feedback is always positive and I am being told consistently that I am in their top tier of choices and that is what I am looking at,\u201d she says. \u201cFor me, it is about explaining my experience to show that on Day 1 I am able to take over, giving them reassurances that I am going to put forward the best face for the Conservative party as possible.\u201d
\nThat face, she says, is not the one presented by one of the front runners, Kevin O\u2019Leary, she says.
\nThis past winter, Ms. Raitt launched a website called \u201cStop Kevin O\u2019Leary\u201d out of what she says was \u201cfear [that in the next election under his potential leadership] we would be explaining away a lot of his past phrases, sayings and statements because they are not Conservative in nature, especially when it comes to the armed forces
\n\u201cSometimes they are inflammatory to the people we actually want to attract as a voter,\u201d she says. \u201cYou need to attract all kinds of votes to win government, especially a majority government in Canada, so you can\u2019t alienate people. It is difficult to have certain things brought up. Kellie (Leitch) is going to be dividing the party along those lines because there is going to be a strong reaction.\u201d
\nBut, she says, the reason you don\u2019t see one single obvious contender in the race getting higher than 22 per cent in polling is that it is a ranked ballot situation and there is \u201clots of room for people to coalesce around a candidate further down\u201d the line.
\nDuring her campaign stop in Aurora on Sunday afternoon, she faced questions from Conservatives expressing \u201cfrustration\u201d at what they saw as the Trudeau government\u2019s \u201cdismantling\u201d of the tenets in the Victims\u2019 Bill of Rights, as well as a budding \u201cdictatorship\u201d \u2013 which Ms. Raitt didn\u2019t dispute, saying a \u201cdictatorship\u201d comes through the Prime Minister\u2019s \u201crebalance the power the opposition has versus the government.\u201d
\n\u201cI want to lead because I want us to win in 2019,\u201d she says. \u201cI know I have lots of private experience, I have lots of cabinet experience, but what I bring to the race is a bit different than most. I am a mom of two. I have lived the suburban life for a long time. I know giving individuals the ability to do well is far better than government giving grants to help companies. That is where my head is and I thought it is a good brand of conservatism and Canadians deserve to have a real choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the 2015 Federal Election, which swept the Conservative party into opposition after nearly a decade in Government, re-elected MP Lisa Raitt was one of the first Conservatives out of the gate to speak out about what went wrong.
\nNow, in a crowded field of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/2017-03-23-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4nS","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 04:28:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}